As investors continue to ride the crypto wave, companies are increasingly accepting bitcoin for transactional purposes. One estimate suggests more than 15,174 businesses worldwide are now doing so, which has implications for payment systems. 

Global standard-setters are brainstorming international standards to oversee the use of artificial intelligence in finance, a growing disruptive trend that poses serious ethical dilemmas like algorithmic bias which disadvantages minorities. Some AI experts say guidance is long overdue. 

There is a high stakes game afoot over how the UK’s financial services will be regulated in a post-Brexit world. At stake is equivalence, whereby the configuration of regulations in the UK and EU are as stringent as each other (or near enough). This would mean that cross-border trade and exchange could occur on a level playing field and, from a regulatory perspective, where neither party has a competitive advantage. 

Regulators are stepping up moves to clean up the crypto sector, making it more palatable for supervised financial firms to get involved, but such is its rapid development that there are still fears of potential pitfalls for the financial system. 

There is some evidence to suggest that eurozone banks are watering down Basel Committee rules, to mask weaknesses leaving some commentators fretting that many of them are under-capitalised.  

China’s second largest property developer China Evergrande Group with $310bn in debts, is near bankruptcy, but analysts do not believe the global financial system faces a ‘Lehman Brothers’ moment.